


Like He Really Loves Me

by Masterofceremonies



Series: All The Ways [5]
Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, M/M, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 07:13:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6274828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masterofceremonies/pseuds/Masterofceremonies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athelstan is keeping a journal because he cannot confess his sins to anyone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like He Really Loves Me

**Author's Note:**

> Back to metaphors! No swears, technically, but still explicit. You'll see why.

_He is gentle, as if hesitant to use his full strength, but none of his movements show uncertainty. He knows what he’s doing and how to do it, but your reactions always seem to surprise him, like you are the first person to arch into his callused fingers, made rough from carving images of the gods into wood, and crafting magnificent boats from unyielding trees._

_That is how you feel, under his gaze, his hands, his body. Like an unyielding tree, coaxed into bending, loosening, parting, all for him. You can see the utter glee in his eyes, focused on whatever inch of your body he has decided to touch in that moment. Your skin is much softer than bark, much easier to shape to his whims, and the results are much more rewarding._

_His usual flickering energy has not dissipated, but it has grown balanced. He no longer twitches and jerks with every heartbeat, but moves steadily, a boat on calm seas rather than rough ones. He takes his time, building pressure slowly. You did not expect it to ever be this way. This calm, this… simple. How could you? Everything about him is harsh. His eyes, his joints, the way he smiles at you like he knows all the details of your worst shames, and has seen how you will die…_

_He does not look at you like that anymore. When he studies you, his expression is almost… reverent. But only in a mocking sense of the word. You can feel how heated your skin is compared to the cool brush of his calloused limbs. The look in his eyes, like you are a particularly delicious morsel of food, and he is a starving man who’s life has been saved by your appearance, that look… it only makes your temperature rise._

_Just before you think you are about to burst into flames from the sweltering fervor gathering in the pit of your being, his lips meet yours, and the heat comes pouring out of your mouth into his. He drinks it down eagerly, and what is consuming you only fuels him, the rough scratch of his beard grazing your neck, your ribs, your hips, as he trails his mouth down your body._

_When he is like this, he never teases more than you can bear. That is for another time. But still, he does like to tease, and so he hesitates, drawing out the moment before he utterly consumes you, cool breath ghosting over the source of your fevered state. You try in vain to arch into his mouth, attempting to sate the need thrumming through your body, but he merely digs his fingers into your hips and keeps you in place. Easily. Like one would hold down a child._

_So you keen and moan knowing by now that the noises spilling from your mouth will cause his eyes to darken, and his grip to tighten more than it already has. He holds the claim of trickster, but you are not above sinking to his level. Even though it feels like an eternity, it is only the space of a few heartbeats before he envelopes you, hands sliding to caress instead of restrain, stroke instead of grip, please instead of punish._

_And you feel rapturous, closer to God than you ever have before, and you could stay like this forever, focusing on the feel of him around you, the scent of pine and smoke and blood that he carries with him always, a scent that once repulsed you but now only causes your eyelids to flutter shut as you roll your hips against the furs beneath you in an ever present attempt to get more._

_But it does not last, nor peak, he doesn’t let it, and all too soon he is pulling away, still smirking, as if this were all a game, and maybe it is to him, maybe you’re nothing but a plaything, a mouse being toyed with by a cat before it’s eaten._

_He sees the hesitation in your eyes, and he doesn’t allow it to fester. Instead, he kisses you, his lips reddened and slick, and there is no release of heat into his mouth because the fire inside of him burns just as brightly as yours. You feed off of him as he does you, the intensity building and multiplying between you until you are shamelessly pressing against him, wordlessly begging for everything he can give._

_He is not one to deny such pleas, especially from someone as beautiful as you. He tells you exactly that, words soft and lilting as he slips his fingers in between your thighs. Your face cannot grow any more flushed, but you imagine that your cheeks still turn red at the praise. The slick feeling his fingertips distracts you as he glides against your skin. You are never able to see where he obtains the oil as if he merely conjured it out of thin air. As if he summoned it by magic._

_But in your current state you cannot mull over this for long, can do nothing but part your legs as he cleaves into you like an axe into a tree, his lips never parting from yours, not even for a moment, not even as you moan and pant and beg. He swallows every noise that you make, his famed silver tongue flicking into your mouth as his skilled fingers make you feel like you are drowning on dry land._

_After an eternity, and far too quickly, he draws back. Your eyes are shut, but you cannot remember closing them. You cannot seem to open them either, not until his rhythmic voice tells you to. Or maybe it only sounds like an order; maybe it really was a plea. Regardless, you cannot disobey, so you look at him, harsh breath catching somewhere deep in your stomach as your gaze travels from that damned smirk that never leaves his face down his wiry torso that looks so fragile but feels so strong against you until it rests on where his thighs part and his hand busily moves, coating himself in the same oil that is smeared across your thighs._

_He giggles. He always giggles when you look like **this** , look at him **like this** , and you know from him telling you at length that the expression on your face is a mixture of fear and awe. He does not give you long to admire him, all of his jutting bones and painted skin coming together to form an image of soot stained beauty. You never have enough time to look._

_He seems to be always looking. Watching. Tasting, touching, feeling, pushing… he has mapped out every inch of your body time and time again until you feel like a well known forest path underneath him. He knows just how to split you open, just when to shift forward so that your mouth falls open, every fiber of your body screaming without making a sound, because now his skin is much hotter than yours, and it feels as if the warmth inside of you has turned to ice, only to be shattered by his triumphant hand._

_You can do nothing but lay there, paralyzed, as he begins to move inside of you. He is murmuring things under his breath, or maybe you are hearing his thoughts, as close as you are to him now. They creep out with each breath, and you cannot begin to know what they mean, because you are too focused on being consumed from the inside out, like flame consumes fragile paper._

_Eventually your body reacts for you, and you meet his languid movements with your own until he cannot restrain himself any longer, until something akin to a growl that has been slowly building in his chest finally bursts free and vibrates your bones, making you shudder and arch off the bed, closer to him, needing to be devoured._

_And devour he does._

_His lips are attached to yours, then they shift to your jaw, then glide down your neck, his tongue pressing firmly against your skin, leaving spit where sweat once was. And he breathes in your ear, saying something about your taste, but you have lost your grasp of any language at all, much less one that is not your native tongue, so all you can do is grip his arms desperately. And he knows that he’s driving you insane, and he feeds of that insanity, fueling his own madness with a manic need to take everything you have ever been with a desperate urge to give you everything he is at the same time._

_You feel his teeth on your collarbone as his lips pull back, no longer trailing kisses but scraping skin. The shift towards violence pulls a gasp from your throat, and he giggles again before making good on his silent threat and biting down. He does not break the skin this time, but he has before, and in abundance. You bear his marks all over your body, the scars you earned from him outnumbering the scars you earned from battle._

_The pleasure is rushing through your body, drowning you in its overwhelming presence, wave after wave crashing over your head in a steady pulsing rhythm. His bite, by contrast, is a harsh lungful of air, a cold and shocking breath that clears your head and sharpens your senses. You move your hands to his back, digging your fingernails into the skin there, drawn taught over angled bone. He hisses in response to your brief grasp at control, and searches out another patch of skin to bruise. Retaliation for the pain you caused. Reward for marking him like he marks you._

_Even as he nips at your jaw, bites into your shoulder, and grazes his sharp teeth over your chest, the pain never becomes too much. You have suffered through much sweeter agony at his hand, much less enjoyable pain at others. Part of you knows that he could, easily, immure you in misery instead of bliss, but he never does. Despite tearing into people with a vicious glee in battle, bathing in their blood like it was cleansing water instead of a dark crimson spray, he doesn’t take that liberty with you. The ache you will feel tomorrow is one that brings a smile to your lips, and his as well._

_True pain is saved for another time._

_Eventually your hands fall from his shoulders, unable to cling to him any longer, unable to do anything but grip the furs beneath you as your desire builds ever higher, thunder crashing in your ears, storm colored eyes locking onto yours as the same roughened hand that had pinned you to the bed a moment before now coils it’s tapered fingers around your core and coaxes your soul from you._

_And you give it, eagerly, readily, without thought, because you once gave every bit of your heart to God, and He never fulfilled you like this, He never brought you such euphoric bliss, He never truly earned your worship and fealty. So you turn your back on Him, choosing instead to scream another name, ripping your heart away from providence and offering the bloody thing up as a sacrifice to the living devil made of flesh and bone whom you would gladly go to hell for._

_He takes it, everything you have to give, readily, almost expectantly, like it was something he had always owned. Maybe you had only borrowed it, tried to claim it as your own, but now it was his once more, to do with as he wished. It seems he realizes this at the same moment you do, because his muscles tense and bunch, as his body turns into a bowstring drawn tight before the arrow is loosed and let fly._

_You are in Valhalla, and you can hear the sound of axes against shields pounding through your skull as your body shakes in time to the beating rhythm. Floki is beside you, or he is behind you, or maybe he and you are the same, because you do not have to reach out to feel him already there, holding you closely as you gasp for air._

_Seconds later, or maybe hours, or an eternity, and you both fade back into yourselves. His arms seemed to have given way, as he rests on his elbows, face nuzzled into the crook of your neck. His breath washes over your flushed skin as you stare at the ceiling in a silent contemplation of everything in the universe and nothing at all. He manages to support himself somehow, not crushing you despite the fact that his body is flush against yours, as he tries to gather his wits._

_It takes an enormous effort to bring your arms up and wrap them around his back, but you manage to do so. At your touch, he sags, like he had been waiting for permission to let his weight press against you. You don’t mind it. Quite the contrary. Feeling his chest rise and fall, offbeat to your own is calming, and you find your pulse slowing long before his heart has stopped beating a frantic tattoo against his ribcage._

_But he owns your heart, doesn't he? It would make sense that it finds peace in being so well guarded. His own still stutters and races from the uncertain and tenuous power it holds over itself. You smile pityingly, but only because he cannot see. Sliding your palm down the curve of his spine, you begin to mimic his touch, mapping out his scars and skin and bones and bruises ever so lightly. You rest your hand on his side with a silent request for him to grant you access._

_And he does, and you can see that it pains him to be this raw, this open, you can see that it pains him to pull his face away from the now kohl stained safety of your neck and meet your gaze, his own eyes crazy and cracked as they too often are, like a fire that has started to consume itself in a desperate attempt to grow bigger and brighter._

_You try your hardest to appear comforting, calm your gaze so that his panic is tempered. Something seems to work, the harsh lines of his face softening as he pulls back, letting you see him, fully. Finally. You smile, and he does too, not the smirk he wears like a mask, nor the grimace he uses when angered, nor the manic expression that appears in battle, but a look you have only ever seen glimpses of before, in quiet moments when he thinks no one is watching._

_Now he knows you see it, see him, and he does not try to hide it, or turn away, or even distract you with a kiss. You know the moment hangs tremulous, easily shattered by once false move, or even a too long hesitance, so you only allow yourself a moment of admiration before you move your hand._

_Confusion flickers across his face, a shadow cast on the brightness of the scene, but it disappears, replaced with surprise when you press your palm against the stuttering beat beneath his ribs. You say nothing, unsure if you can put into words the feelings that race through you. Your hesitance disappears when he mirrors your gesture, his hand coming up to feel the steady thrumming in your bones that says more than you ever could._

_His smile returns, his pulse slows, frantic wingbeats against a constricting cage turning into an even drumbeat that perfectly fits with your own._

_You stay like that for a while, each claiming possession of the other’s soul while offering up your own in payment._


End file.
